Hacker News Reader

Comment by vesky | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why but reposting seems to happen a lot on HackerNews. It's not the fact that they get reposted that's bugging me but the fact that the same people upvote them. Why would you still upvote something if you know you've seen it before on HN? It eludes me.

View on HN

Probably because they haven't seen it before. This is the first time I've see this posted.

I wouldn't really say that it bothers me. I posted the link to the above discussion because I think if someone comes to the comment section they might be interested in it.

But it certainly wouldn't hurt to do a quick HN search before posting a new submission.

  > ... it certainly wouldn't hurt to do a quick
  > HN search before posting a new submission.

Won't happen. I've been saying it literally for years, and I can tell you now, it won't happen.

I implemented the first-phase of a semi-automated duplicate detector to help people find previous submissions, and I got hate mail for it. Some people are actively against duplicate detection.

Plus dupe detection is trivial to defeat. Basically, the current set-up works in favor of people gaming it.

It'll be new to some people (it was new to me), and so it'll get upvoted. If everyone had already seen it, it wouldn't get upvoted. Don't see anything wrong with that.

This one only went through because it's missing the www, so it didn't trigger the repost blocker. Maybe that should be taken into account?

It proves that re-posting is effective for content owners, although it's really annoying when reposts don't include anything new. This one seems to sneak through because it's really interesting. I just pre-ordered one.

>the fact that the same people upvote them

Evidence for that is what?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com